Since you asked, I'll be glad to answer this one.
Gaming opened a great and many doors for me. As a child, facing abuse, it gave me away to escape the world I lived in. An interest in Videogame design led me to coding, which led me to being a part time open-source coder.
Beyond that, it gave me a reason to go to college, despite my hatred of all institutionalized learning. I'm paying 28k US$ a year to learn how to do video game design, computer animation, art, and a few other things.
In short that "thing that turns kids into [etc]" gave me a reason to fight for a future. Way to go, generation gap, for proving once again that there are plenty of good reasons to roll with the times.
Edit:
To take this a bit further, gaming is part of what brings me and my friends together. I met several at my closest friends at gaming tournaments, and there's even a few local regulars that I vie against that have a fairly heathy competitive vibe going.
I'm not strong - I have severe injuries in my right leg that make it difficult to run, and countless problems that keep me fairly weakened physically... But, for some of us, that's alright when you can just post online "Hey, anyone up for a bout of Smash Brothers?" and have a friend right next to you in a few minutes over IP.
I guess I'm just trying to say, as someone who grew up in the Mario vs. Sonic era, that I think, strongly, that instead of closing doors for me, gaming opened a great and many doors that otherwise would have remained shut for most of my life. For people to show such a one sided ideal (not that I don't acknowledge some of the woman's points as perfectly valid and concerning) is not only wrong, it is a very wrong way of trying to open a debate. That is not someone looking for discussion and consensus - that is someone looking to push their point with no questions asked - someone not even worth Hitler's time, let alone mine.
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